The Busy Woman's Guide to Murder by Mary Jane Maffini Page B

about.”
    Mincing? “I don’t believe I minced.”
    “Trust me. You were always a little—”
    “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, Kristee,” I said.
    “Yeah, well. Too little. Too late.”
    “That reminds me, do you remember the first victim, Bethann Reynolds?”
    “Sure. She had a hard time too. But she’s another person like me who got tired of being bullied and decided to fight back. She took her former employer to court and won a major settlement for harassment. It was actually a school board too. When other people don’t help us, we can do it ourselves.” She flashed me a guilt-inducing look.
    “Is that a new kind of fudge?” Jack said, leaning in toward the display cabinet. “It doesn’t seem familiar.”
    Her face lit up. She was quite appealing when she was talking about candy. It was everything else in the world that was the problem. “Triple chocolate truffles,” she said with pride. “Dark, semisweet, and white chocolate. I found a new way to make them complement each other.”
    “Wow,” Jack said.
    Kristee would have been through hell for sure. I cut her a bit of slack and let the mincing remark go. I supposed there were many things worse than mincing. Being fat at St. Jude’s, for instance. That must have been torture. She was right. My remarks were too little and too late.
    Didn’t matter much apparently, because Jack and Kristee had put together a box of the new triple chocolate truffles and I added two gift boxes of black-and-white fudge to the order. And a regular box for us. After all.
    I thought that Kristee had mellowed a bit by the time the amount was rung up on the register, but that turned out to be premature. “When I saw the photo of the woman who was killed in the hit-and-run Friday night, I thought it was Serena. I was celebrating right up until I found out that it was someone else. What a letdown. I guess whoever aimed for her didn’t do her homework well.”
    Mona’s face flashed through my mind.
    Jack sputtered. “Come on, Kristee, that was a tragedy to have a person killed that way. She never did anything to you.”
    “Yeah, yeah, tragic for Bethann. But not if it had been Serena. If she’d been killed a hundred different painful ways, it wouldn’t be nearly enough payback for the harm she did to people. I would have done it myself if I’d had the chance. That all? I have some white chocolate bark with dried sweetened cranberries on special this weekend. Going fast.”
    “Sounds good,” Jack said. “And we’d like a bag of dog biscuits too. The bone-shaped ones.”
    I said nothing. I just kept wondering if the victim had been mistaken for Serena and if someone I’d known at St. Jude’s had taken the opportunity to target their murderous rage at the wrong person. Someone like Mona, for instance.
    Kristee finished the transaction and said with an evil grin, “But at least they got Tiffanee. That felt good.”
    Jack and I said, “What?” at the same time.
    Kristee said, “They got Tiffanee.”
    I felt a chill. “You mean that was Tiffanee who was hit last night? I didn’t think the name had—”
    “A cop told me this morning, just after I opened. They know these things and this guy has a weakness for fudge. It was her, all right. Bang, you’re dead. Now other people tell me that Princess T had been walking around Woodbridge all these years pretending to be a decent person, with her yoga and her sandals and all that BS. I can see through that. I remember the kinds of things she said and did to me. I remember the gloating look on her face. I hope she suffered before she died. I am not going to pretend to be shocked or upset. I hope she saw the face of the person who hit her and I hope she knew why.”
    Jack and I were very quiet as we walked back to the Miata. Back at the car, the little dogs jumped with joy trying to get at the bag of dog biscuits as soon we got in. I was still too shocked to enjoy the moment. So was Jack.
    I realized I was